Hello all

Does anybody know if vacuum sealing plant material (root bark, stems and leaves) and then freezing them would preserve present essential oils until an extraction or steam distillation can be performed?

I have heard thay drying would work, but with a loss of oils in the process, and was wondering if this process has been proven or known to work better or if any member has had experience with it!

From my experience of plant  material ---->

Put each of them in a few seperate bags and the freezing will help you when you extract because the freezing and thawing breaks down cell walls . Personaly i would put them in jars as a lot / all (?) plastic has nasty shit softeners in them and you dont want your kids to be born with flippers .

When i think of freezing and essential oils and plastic bags i wonder if the essential oils could sweat out and react with the plastic ? And maybe burn holes in it ?

Sealing them in plastic will not prevent them rotting if there are microorganisms present.

TLS has a point about freeze thaw action. BPA free plastics are available.

I think bags and freezing are the way to go. Oxidation will be slow at low temps. Dry cool places are the way to go if freezing isnt possible. light may also damage the goods.

Thanks embezzler and tls,

Im not so worried about rotting with vacuum sealing and placement in the freezer especially with my needed preservation time being about a month.

Along with your post embezzler, i was suggesting vacuum sealing so that little to no oxidation would occur at all but lugh At the collective made a good point on the subject, that the vacuum sealing process might, when the vacuum strengthens near the end of the sealing process, volatize some of the safrole!

Interesting, but i think it will beet the safrole lost by normal conditions over a month.

An inert gas such as argon would be the best way to prevent oxidation in storage containers:

h**p://www.ehow.com/facts_5890559_argon-gas-used-food-processing_.html

as opposed to a vacuum with a material as volatile as safrole    A pressure cooker can be modified easily for steam distillation, but the best yielding steam distillation procedure is by heating the water and safrole containing vegetation with a microwave as in the attached article with eugenol and anethole:

ARKIVOC 2004 (vi) 66-71

Argon would be great! But not for the hobby/underground chemist. Price/aquisition to store a little rootbark...

Lugh, your linked essay does not support your assertion... It steam distillation extracts more eugenol and anethole... Did you not read the paper...?

Furthermore:

Hxxp://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/safrole.distillation.htm

In this article, and from my limited knowledge, safroles volatility, which correct me if im wrong, is related to its bp? Is above 92celcius even in the presece of a super strong vacuum... I dont think that a food vacuum sealer is going to pull much (if any) safrole from the bark in the last 5 seconds of te process where a vacuum, and not a strong one at that, is generated.

Maybe im missing something here...

Vapour pressure and boiling point are different. You can smell it below 90 degrees so obviously safrole is coming off at room temperature. Any sassafras I have seen stinks at room temperature and if it didn't I'd be worried.

I don't think you will loose a lot vacuum sealing the rb. Surface area will play a bigger part than vacuum here I reckon.

Other inert gasses are available inexpensively but may be overkill for your application.